Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - A Wes Huntress Encore for the Beginning of Our Second Season

Episode Date: December 1, 2003

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This is Planetary Radio. We hope all our American listeners had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you've almost fully recovered from that caloric nightmare of a holiday. For all of you, welcome to the first show of our second season. I'm Matt Kaplan, hoping you like the new theme music. We'll have a new Q&A segment for you in just a moment and a brand new visit with Bruce Betts at the end of our program. In between, we're bringing back our conversation with former NASA Associate Administrator Wes Huntress. Stick around. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers.

A listener asked, How did water arrive or form on the Earth, and when did it happen? Our understanding of how the planets formed leads us to believe that the vast bulk of water on Earth is nearly as old as the Earth itself, but the story is a tangled one. Earth, like the other planets, formed through the accretion of bodies called planetesimals,

which themselves formed out of the dust that swirled around the early Sun. But conditions at the Earth's distance from the Sun were simply too hot for water to be incorporated into the planetesimals that formed here. If this were the whole story, the Earth would have accreted dry. However, models of planetary formation show that a great deal of mixing of planetesimals occurred early in solar system history. Water-rich planetesimals from farther away from the Sun would have been scattered throughout the inner solar system, and the Earth could have acquired its water from this source. The comets that

we observe today, which are nearly 50% ice, represent the vestige of the most water-rich part of this primordial planetesimal population. But much of this water may have been destroyed early in Earth's history. To find out what happened, stay tuned to Planetary Radio. We first aired this conversation with Dr. Wes Huntress last June. As you'll hear, he spent many years with NASA, rising to associate director with responsibility for all science activity. Now this planetary scientist serves as president of the Planetary Society and directs the geophysical lab at the Carnegie Institution in Washington.

Dr. Huntress, thanks very much for being part of Planetary Radio this week. Oh, it's a delight to be here. What brings you to Southern California? Oh, I come to the West Coast about every six to eight weeks, generally to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where I'm still a visiting scientist, so I kind of get to play in my original pond out here. And you have an even greater history, a longer history at JPL and in this region, right?

Yeah, I started in 1968 with the launch and landing of Surveyor 7 on the moon. That's what attracted me to JPL. I left in 1988 after we sold the Cassini mission. I left in 1988 after we sold the Cassini mission and went to NASA headquarters and exercised a different level of responsibility for planetary exploration for about 10 years before joining the Carnegie Institution. And eventually at NASA, ending up as associate administrator. Right, associate administrator for space science. And before that, I was the director of the Planetary Exploration Division in 1990. So for about eight years, I was responsible for this nation's planetary exploration program.

That's quite a burden, I would imagine. A burden, but also an enormous pleasure. And the reason for that, of course, is you're in a position to influence very strongly what the nation does in planetary exploration. Do you miss NASA? I miss the ability to guide the nation's space science program, and I miss the discussions with Congress, the administration, and inside the agency on all of this.

discussions with Congress, the administration, and inside the agency on all of this. What I don't miss is the debilitating schedule that you have to go through. Eight years was enough. And you are, as you said, still a practicing scientist. I mean, you are the director of the geophysical lab at the Carnegie Institution, not the Institute, in Washington. So you're still very much a planetary scientist. Yes, absolutely. And one of the things I'm doing at the Geophysical Lab, of course, is to increase the amount of planetary science that we do at the lab, which has historically for its first hundred years been focused mainly on the Earth.

And we will, of course, get to the fact that you are also president of the Planetary Society, but maybe we'll talk about science for a few more minutes. Correct me if I'm wrong. I talk to a lot of planetary scientists. A lot of them are geologists who 10, 15, 20 years ago, not very far back, would be wandering around in a desert or on a mountain or something. And a lot of these folks are now calling themselves planetary scientists.

Is this sort of a sea change in geophysics? I mean, we're still looking at Earth, but in a way we're learning about Earth by learning about our solar system neighbors. It always helps to understand something in the context of a wider sea of things. And that's what's happening, I think, in the geosciences. Of course, we can study the Earth in great depth, but to understand the Earth as a planet, we have to consider it in the context of the other planets, especially if you want to understand how this planet originated and how it evolved and the magic transition from an early geochemical surface to a biological

one. And so that's why you see so much more interest in planetary science because, in fact, we can conduct more planetary science. We're doing more missions. We're doing more sophisticated science at these bodies. And even the biologists are getting interested now. I suppose it's pretty obvious that we have far, far more still to learn than we have learned about the solar system and the bodies in it. Oh, absolutely. And every mission we send, no matter what the target, we constantly

learn more than we'd expected, and we are constantly surprised, and that's what makes the reason for having follow-up missions. So there's plenty of excitement with every mission. Oh, absolutely. And, of course, this is a special year because we have so many spacecraft on their way to Mars in this opportunity. Let's talk about that. many spacecraft on their way to Mars in this opportunity. Let's talk about that.

As we speak, because we're recording this the previous week, it is possible that one of the Mars Exploration Rovers has been sent on its way to Mars. We do know that Mars Express is already on its way there. Mars is getting a lot of attention this year. Does it deserve it? Oh, certainly. Absolutely. of attention this year. Does it deserve it? Oh, certainly, absolutely. Mars, of course, has kind of occupied the imagination of man throughout the whole century. Our missions have only increased that interest and rekindled now the idea that there may have once been life

on that planet and perhaps even life now. And this year, 2003, is a specially unique opportunity because the amount of energy it takes to get there is so low. So that's why we have so many spacecraft going there from so many nations. And we've got, as of today anyway, we've got two on the way, one Japanese, one European. The Japanese being Nozomi. Nozomi. We have two to launch from the United States, the two rovers,

and we have two in orbit there already. And so it's going to be an exciting time come December, January. Mars is certainly not the only target worth looking at in the solar system. There is a lot going on out there. Galileo about to finish a very successful mission. Cassini about to really get started at Saturn and now talk of Pluto well I mean these are all things that excite me a lot

one of the things I think we have to appreciate is that the solar system is our backyard there's not just one planet like you pointed out there are many of them and each of them has their own uniqueness. One of the things we discovered when we first started this enterprise back in the 60s and early 70s was that every single one of these bodies, including their moons, are very different. They're not the same. And so it's wonderful to have these missions going out. Of course, Cassini-Huygens, that spacecraft gets to Saturn on July 1st, 2004. That's going to be mind-boggling in what it returns about Titan and Saturn and its

rings. And there's a lot more to come. Is this a particularly exciting time to be a planetary scientist? Oh, absolutely. I was a planetary scientist in the 1980s. Throughout that entire decade, there was not a single launch of a planetary spacecraft. And we just had to wait for the occasional flyby of Voyager at one of those planets, as wonderful as they were. Now, after the resurgence in the 90s, we're launching planetary spacecraft every year just about. And so the amount of activity in the solar system has increased enormously. It's an exciting time, yes. We're talking with Dr. Wes Huntress.

He is the director of the geophysical lab at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, but he is also the president of the Planetary Society. And I wonder if maybe after we take a break, we could come back and talk a little bit about what that new role means to you. You've been president for how long now? About a year and a half. I'll have my second anniversary in September. So your feet are thoroughly wet, I would say.

Yeah, I'm right up to my knees. Well, let's find out what you've learned over that period and your other thoughts about what the society is up to after we take this break. Planetary Radio will be back in just a moment. Join Pasadena's other big New Year's party. Wild About Mars comes to the Pasadena Convention Center on Saturday and Sunday, January 3 and 4. Join Buzz Aldrin, Ray Bradbury, and Bill Nye the Science Guy as the first Mars Exploration Rover arrives at the Red Planet.

Order your discounted tickets by calling 1-877-PLANETS today. That's 1-877-PLANETS or online at planetary.org. Back with Dr. Wes Huntress. He is visiting Pasadena, as he often does, and has stopped in at the headquarters of the Planetary Society, where he has now served as president for almost a year and a half, you said, I believe. Right.

We should talk about that a little bit. You stepped into some pretty big shoes, I should say. Oh, certainly. And they are shoes that can't be filled, essentially. So I just kind of have to walk in my own. You know, I'm a founding member of the Planetary Society. And Carl Sagan was one of my colleagues. Bruce Murray was one of my bosses in my youth at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

And Lou Friedman was a colleague. And so I've been a supporter of the Society ever since. Of course, during my time at NASA headquarters, the Planetary Society was key in bringing the message to Congress and the administration about what we wanted to do. And now I'm very proud to be able to be the president of it and have been asked, in fact, by the society to be president. Does that role of advocacy continue to be an important part of what the society does?

It's absolutely crucial. It's critical because the decision makers in Congress need to know that the public supports this planetary exploration enterprise and the Planetary Society is the key society which brings that message to these folks other than their own constituents. What are the other parts of the Society's mission that you're most interested in? The other part is actually engaging the public in the planetary exploration enterprise. The Society does that very well, and the opportunity to draw more people in and get them engaged

is increasing with the communications revolution, the use of the web, for example. I recall the days of Mars Pathfinder, when the society was instrumental in bringing those images back to the public in near real time, and that was instrumental in getting the nation excited about that mission. I always think, of course, during that mission and the society's role on the side in it, of that glorious moment when scientists came to PlanetFest and got a standing ovation. It doesn't happen often enough in our society. Well, and something else that I think is important to understand is, you know,

scientists, because it takes so much of their life to build these instruments that go to the planets, have always been rather close held when it comes to the data and information. And this mission was the first time that we insisted that the data, as soon as it got back to JPL, was split into two channels, and one went to the scientists and the other went immediately to the public. It is, as we talked about before the break, a big year for planetary exploration, particularly for Mars. Big year for the society as well, because there are many wonderful events that we'll be talking about on this radio show and on the website in the coming months. A lot happening in the next six months, roughly, six or seven.

But it's also a challenging time. I mean, it's a challenging time for most nonprofit organizations as well. Is part of your job as president helping to make sure that the society can continue to do everything it does in its mission? Well, yes. In fact, that's one of my roles. One of my roles is sort of as a cheerleader as well. Lou Friedman is the executive director. He has to do all the hard work. And one of my functions is to try to help to guide the society into those arenas

that will, in fact, bring the most value to the public and get the public more on board for support of planetary exploration. And that's what these events are all about, engaging the public, getting them to support this enterprise because they find excitement in it, even in challenging times in the economy, because we need something uplifting when things are down. And that's exactly what this enterprise is about. I was going to say maybe especially in challenging times.

How about the research side, the research that the Society backs, NEO grants, I'm thinking of Near-Earth Object Study grants, SETI support, and so on. In fact, SETI itself is probably worth talking about, since that's often something that the Planetary Society is connected with. Well, I think it's important for the society to support this kind of research where it can. SETI is a good example because the federal government abandoned support of SETI, but it is a kind of enterprise that has, although high risk, the potential for the payoff is enormous. It doesn't take a lot of money. And so this is an arena in which the society can help.

And so in projects such as this, I think it's our role where our members support it. Been about a year and a half. I'm going to guess that you probably have some thoughts, a vision, as it has been put by some, for what the society should be up to in the foreseeable, well, the near future. Yeah, I think there's two areas that we need to be especially mindful of. One is to continue to support and advocate for the planetary exploration enterprise, the robotic exploration of the planets that will ultimately lead the agency into sending humans to these places.

And that's the second area that the society needs to increase its efforts in, and that is to try to get this nation, this world, to move beyond Earth orbit and to send humans outward and to establish a permanent presence in the solar system. I'm glad you brought that up because elsewhere on the Planetary Society website, people can read about a forum that the Planetary Society just sponsored a couple of weeks ago with a couple of other very prominent agencies, and some of the conclusions paralleled what you've just said. Well, exactly, and that workshop was part of this new initiative we're undertaking

to try to support human exploration beyond Earth orbit. The Society supports planetary exploration, whether by robots or whether by humans. The Society's problem has been that the human exploration enterprise has been stuck in low Earth orbit since 1972, and we'd like to see it move beyond that. We think it's time that it move beyond that, and this country needs to develop a vision for where it wants to go beyond Earth orbit. When would you like to see humans walking on Mars?

Within the next 50 years. I'm sure we'd all like to see it sooner, but I'm somewhat of a pragmatist having served in Washington, D.C. And it's a very expensive enterprise. and it's a very expensive enterprise. It's an enterprise that will have to garner support from the public and from our representatives. So I think it will take anywhere from 30 to 50 years to do it and I think we should approach this idea of sending humans to Mars in a systematic fashion so that we do it a step at a time

and in a way in which it will be a lasting enterprise instead of just a one-off event like Apollo was. Any other major goals, things you would love to see happen in this solar system? I would like us to find evidence of past or present life on Mars somewhere. I think that's a very worthwhile goal. It will really open up humans' minds about their place in the universe. The other is finding an Earth-like planet around another star somewhere. Dr. Wes Huntress has been our special guest

on this week's edition of Planetary Radio. He is the president of the Planetary Society, also the director of the Geophysical Lab at the Carnegie Institution in Washington. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. Earth originally acquired its water through the accretion of water-rich planetesimals that formed in the cold outer solar system.

But much of this water was probably blasted away when a Mars-sized planet slammed into the early Earth, forming a short-lived ring that condensed into our moon and reheated the whole planet to its melting point once again. This giant impact could have destroyed or stripped away whatever water had collected in the Earth's first hundred million years. If this is true, then the Earth's present oceans were accreted after this date, 4.4 billion years ago. This was during the time that the inner solar system was being bombarded heavily by comets and meteorites, which we know from studying the ancient cratered surfaces of the Moon, Mercury, and Mars.

Scientists have guessed that about half of our oceans would have been delivered by 4.3 billion years ago, and three-quarters of the oceans by 4.2, and so on. However, recent studies have called this scenario into question. Minerals that had to form at low temperatures have been found to have ages of 4.4 billion years or just around the estimated time of the moon forming impact. What's the real story?

We're still searching. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. As promised, we finish the first show of the second season of Planetary Radio with What's Up and Bruce Betts in an undisclosed Thanksgiving celebration zone. Hello, Bruce. Hello. Are you still eating there? Are you still enjoying turkey?

I remembered when I introduced the show today that we have a lot of listeners to whom the Thanksgiving tradition is probably fairly foreign. So we should just say that it's time for getting together with friends and overeating. Exactly. And now in order to give it a more international component, we're having the traditional leftover turkey pizza. That's a great use of it. I've got to tell my mother about that next year. Well, what do you have for us?

Well, up in the night sky, we have planets. Go out and look for them. We've got Mars still up there in the evening heading towards the west. We've got Venus shortly after sunset. You can also see in the west. And you can look for Saturn in the middle of the night and also in the early morning, and also Jupiter before dawn.

Good times in the planetary world. Shall we move on to this week in space history? On December 4, 1996, the Pathfinder mission launched on its way to Mars for what would turn out to be a successful lander and little rover. Let's hope we can see this

duplicated a couple of times in the next couple of months. Exactly. And on December 7th, 1972, the final Apollo mission to the moon launches, Apollo 17. On to Random Space Fact! Did you know that the favorite cloud of comets at great distance from the sun, forming a spherical shape that is loved by sea lions everywhere,

is called the Oort Cloud? That's O-O-R-T, Oort, right? Yes, O-O-R-T, Oort, Oort, Oort, Oort. Here's a little bit of fish. Thank you, thank you. That's entertaining the family, too, isn't it? I'm getting the dog nervous here, though. All right, we're going to stop the sea lion impersonations.

Why don't we move on to the trivia contest? Yes, let's, because this is going to be an interesting response. All right, so last week's trivia question, what was the name of the woman who was hit by a 10-pound meteorite in Alabama in 1954? Well, we had, as usual, lots of answers, and we think that they were all correct, but what's interesting here is that they're all correct,

but they're all from different sources. Everybody agreed that her name, her last name, was Hodges, but her first name was variously reported as Anne Elizabeth and simply Mrs. Hewlett Hodges, which I assume is her husband's name. We also got H.C. Hodges, E.H. Hodges. And Bruce, it didn't stop there. Really?

It happened on either November 30th, 1954, September 30th, 1954, or March 30th, 1954. Now, I'm going with March 30th because that was exactly one week before I was born, and so I figured that that was an auspicious thing to happen a week before I was born. Even the size of the meteor is in question. It may have been 8 pounds. It may have been 10 pounds. It might have been some other weight. That would be a meteorite, Matt. Oh, that's right. Once it lands, it's a meteorite. Yes, no matter what it weighs.

Well, anyway, 8 or 10 or whatever, but anyway, it hit her in the leg, and what a lot of people do seem to agree on. I thought it hit her in the stomach. Oh, no, I think we only had reports that it hit her in the leg after coming through the roof. Well, I mean, I do know why a lot of this information has been kind of blurred over the years. She had to go into the Meteorite Witness Protection Program.

Well, we do have it fairly reliably that she lived opposite the Comet Drive-In in Sylacauga, Alabama. You know, I ask the trivia questions, but you go that extra mile. And our listeners, thank you so much. And here's what we got from one of our listeners, David Glazer in Berkeley, California.

He had the correct answer. He also added what is not commonly known as the following story. Mrs. Hodges had the radio on in her living room and was playing one of the year's greatest hits, Shake, Rattle and Roll by Bill Haley and his Comets. After the meteorite struck her, it hit the floor, rolled across the room and knocked over the radio. Thus was born the term rock and roll. But you know what? David wasn't our winner. Hannah Beck was, and Hannah Beck is a past winner.

She covered all her bases. David wasn't our winner. Hannah Beck was. And Hannah Beck is a past winner. She covered all her bases. She said that the meteor struck and then became a meteorite. No, was it already a meteorite? Never mind.

She said it was Elizabeth Ann Hewlett Hodges. So Hannah Beck of Ridgefield, Connecticut, congratulations. You're this week's winner. Congratulations. What? Exciting. I guess we should have a trivia question for next week. Yeah, we should. Just put the pizza down. Exciting. I guess we should have a trivia question for next week. Yeah, we should.

Just put the pizza down. All right. Funny you'd mention that, though. Here's our question for this coming week is, what satellite out there, what moon is sometimes known as the pizza moon? Oh, the pizza moon. I have a good guess, but I'm not absolutely sure. How can people enter this week's contest? They can go to planetary.org and follow the links to

Planetary Radio, where they will learn how to enter the contest and tell us, what's the pizza moon? Bruce, we're all done. I hope you like the new theme music. I really hope I do, too. Yeah, because he hasn't heard it yet, folks. So he'll get to evaluate it just like the rest of you. Yes, and if you all dislike it, blame Matt. If you like it, then I had a lot to do with it. We'll talk to you next week.

All right. Well, everyone look up in the night sky and think about not getting hit by a meteor. Tell Mrs. Hodges. Bruce Betts is the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us each week right here for What's Up. Happy Thanksgiving, Bruce.

Happy Thanksgiving. Join us next week for a visit with science journalist and Yale professor Betty Ann Holtzman Keblis. She is about to publish Almost Heaven, the story of women in space. Have a great week.